Android app 'Puncture Wala' ensures you are never stranded on the road alone

Thursday 12 December 2013, 00:24 AM by Aditya Chatterjee

Imagine a situation when you are travelling alone or with your family. All of a sudden, the vehicle breaks down, putting you in severe discomfort. Apart from the inconvenience, it is may not be safe to be stranded on a road, possibly with no support in close proximity.

The scenario above is a terrible situation but then it is a thing of past now as Puncture Wala, an android app is all set to help you in such occasions. Designed by Jagat, a Mumbai resident, Puncture Wala is a 1.03MB app which can be downloaded via the Google Play Store.

After completing his graduation in commerce and doing an Entrepreneur course on ‘Start Your Business’ from SPJain Management Institute, Mumbai, Jagat is now working in a software company as a Experience Analyst / Usability Analyst. Similar to other great inventions, even the idea of Puncture Wala struck Jagat when he and his family were travelling on a bike and it suddenly stalled. He was stuck for 30 minutes on the highway until someone came his aid.

Even living in a metro like Mumbai which is well equipped with all the modern facilities and services was not helpful, as it took half an hour for emergency services to reach him. However, this inspired Jagat to find solutions. He started collating information and insights to build on the Puncture Wala app idea.

Puncture Wala claims to offer a better, precise and on-time solution compared to the emergency services which need annual subscription to avail their services. Jagat realised that instead of calling emergency service operators who take their own time to reach the venue, why not tie up with the locals? Apart from the benefit of creating opportunity, it also saves time and effort of the car/bike owner by providing on time services.

The app consists of 3 main sections namely Puncture shops, Garage and Towing. It offers list of contacts available under these three different sections. It displays addresses, contact numbers and the names of the service shops. It also has an option where the user can directly call the service immediately. Currently, it is only available in five metro cities which are Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Surat and Bengaluru.

Jagat personally visited a lot of local shops to educate them about the benefits of their tip-up with this app. He took pain staking efforts to get as many contacts as possible. It started off as a purely Mumbai centric app but slowly gained momentum in other cities. People across cities started offering their help to promote this noble cause.

This project is indeed very helpful and Jagat took a loan of Rs.5 lakhs to fund his own project. He is still studying different ways to make it financially viable and make it a very affordable solution to all. He has resorted to social mediums like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and Google+ etc to promote and market his endeavour.

The Puncture Wala APP is free to download and can be downloaded from here (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.my.puncture_wala). The App can also be downloaded from their official website http://www.PunctureWala.com .